Obama --Little real change from Bush assault on Constitution

[The Center for Constitutional Rights has issued an alarming assesment of Obama's first hundred days, at <http://ccrjustice.org/100daysassessment>. It is abundantly clear that defending democratic liberties is completely in the interests of our class, so the following excerpts from the report may be of some interest to comrades.]

The First 100 Days of the Obama Administration: Small Glimmers of Hope, but Little Real Change

... despite several strong steps, the Obama presidency has failed to live up to its promises in many areas of critical importance, including human rights, torture, rendition, secrecy and surveillance.

In the 2008 elections, the people of the United States resoundingly rejected the Bush administration legacy of torture, warrantless surveillance and a seemingly endless expansion of executive power under the rubric of the “war on terror.” What remained to be seen, however, was the political willingness and commitment of the Obama administration to not only promise hope and change, but to take concrete action ....

In its first 100 days, the Obama administration has not lived up to its promises of hope and change....

... most public statements by President Obama and other administration officials have focused on “moving forwards” and avoiding “retribution.” The vast amount of public information pointing to criminal activity committed by high level government officials compels the Obama administration to fully and transparently investigate and hold those responsible accountable to the fullest extent of the law – not to put the issue aside....

... the persistence of Bush-era torture techniques added to the Army Field Manual in Appendix M, make ending torture an unfinished promise....

[On unlawful detention] ... an Obama administration detention policy that has, in practice, too frequently has resembled that of the Bush administration. In practice, the men at Guantánamo have remained imprisoned, often under inhumane conditions, and the Obama administration has defended in court the use of Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan as a new prison outside the reach of law....

... The Obama administration has been largely silent on the issue of preventive detention – particularly the existing domestic preventive detention regimes that have caused vast harm to many people who would never be charged at all or charge only with minor immigration violations without relation to criminal conduct. Preventive detention is a threat to due process, the rule of law and, most directly, to those targeted in “preventive” dragnets....

[On Federal prosecutions against animal rights' and environmental activists for "terrorism"] ...The escalation of “Green Scare” prosecutions in the first 100 days of the Obama administration demonstrate not only the need for action from the Obama administration but an end to complacency among activists about attacks on the right to dissent....

[And so on and so forth. The whole report deserves to be read, to appreciate how little Obama has done in defense of our much-assaulted, battered, constitutional rights. -- YM]

What US imperialism did to IRAN in 1953

President Admits to US "Role in the Overthrow of a Democratically Elected Iranian Government"

[From: news.antiwar.com ][This is not to be construed as any endorsement of Obama, who, as an Illinois State Senator, advocated bombing Iran. -- YM]

by Jason Ditz, June 04, 2009

While far from the focus of his historic Cairo speech today, President Barack Obama’s comments on America’s history with Iran have caused something of a stir, as he became the first sitting US president to publicly admit to America’s role in the 1953 coup in Iran.

“In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government,” Obama admitted, referring to the CIA’s role in the coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq after he nationalized the Iranian oil industry.

The US and British governments supported a coup d’etat in 1953 to ensure Western control over Iranian oil production. Iran remained under the control of the Shahist government until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, in which the current government ceased power.

In the 30 years since the revolution, the US and Iran have had a hostile relationship. In the 1980s this led to the US and Britain supporting the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein as a regional opponent to Iran. The US provided Iraq with considerable support during the eight year long Iran-Iraq War.

This culminated on July 3, 1988, when a US warship attacked an Iranian civilian jetliner which it claims to have mistaken for an F14 fighter plane. The attack killed all 290 passengers aboard Iran Air Flight 655. Admiral Crowe, the Joint Chiefs chairman at the time, said the US “deeply regretted” the killings.

As Iran faces a hotly contested presidential election this month, the prospect of improved ties with the US looms large, if somewhat tempered by a long history of distrust and repeated comments from US officials saying they don’t really except negotiations with Iran to settle anything. Still, for the first time in 30 years the possibility of somewhat normalized relations seems real.

Cuba -- OAS, an "historic" decision?

From: <http://www.ft-ci.org/>
La Verdad Obrera 328
Thursday, June 4, 2009
CUBA - OAS An "historic" decision?

The recent vote in the Organization of American States (OAS) lifts the obstacles that prevented Cuba's participation in this organization. In the context of the world crisis, the US is trying a policy of diplomatic détente towards Latin America, compared with Bush's old prescriptions. The statement approved unanimously by the 34 countries, with the support of the US, had the governments of Lula of Brazil and the Kirchners of Argentina, together with Mexico, as its main creators. What is presented as an "historic" event served, however, to promote the survival of a reactionary organization like the OAS, very challenged, and through which the US has always implemented its policy of domination in the region. The progressive governments, which replaced the neo-liberals, are giving cover to this imperial relocation, faced with its crisis of hegemony. The declaration says, "the participation of Cuba in the OAS will be the result of a process of dialogue begun at the request of the government of Cuba and of agreement with the practices, purposes and principles of the OAS," that demands respect for "freedom of expression," "human rights," and "freedom of parties." That is, a platform on which the US seeks to open negotiations that will permit it to push for a "democratic" way to capitalist restoration on the island.

Obama embraces environmental devastation

Environmentalists feel betrayed by the EPA's decision not to block new mountaintop mining projects.

By Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten May 31, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- With the election of President Obama, environmentalists had expected to see the end of the "Appalachian apocalypse," their name for exposing coal deposits by blowing the tops off whole mountains.

But in recent weeks, the administration has quietly made a decision to open the way for at least two dozen more mountaintop removals. In a letter this month to a coal ally, Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), the Environmental Protection Agency said it would not block dozens of "surface mining" projects. The list included some controversial mountaintop mines.

The industry says the practice of using explosives to blast away a peak is safer and more efficient than traditional shaft mining. But critics say the process scars the landscape and dumps tons of waste -- some of it toxic -- into streams and valleys.

The administration's decision is not the final word on the projects or the future of mountaintop removal. But the letter, coupled with the light it sheds on relations between the mining industry and the Obama White House, has disappointed environmentalists. Some say they feel betrayed by a president they thought would end or sharply limit the practice.

The issue is politically sensitive because environmentalists were an active force behind Obama's election, and the president's standing is tenuous among Democratic voters in coal states. West Virginia, for example, voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election largely because Democrat Al Gore was critical of the coal industry.

Moreover, Obama needs support from local lawmakers for an energy agenda that would further regulate home-state industries, but halting mountaintop mining could eliminate jobs and put upward pressure on energy prices in a time of economic hardship.

Coal advocates have solicited help from officials as high up as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. And the issue has sparked contentious debates within the administration, including one shouting match in which top officials from two government agencies were heard pounding their fists on the table, according to sources briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity when discussing White House dealings.

The White House is "searching for a way to walk this tightrope," said Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America. "They have a large constituency of people who want to see an immediate end to mountaintop removal, and an equally large constituency . . . whose communities depend on those jobs."

Shortly after his inauguration, Obama won praise from the green lobby for taking a skeptical view of the mining process. And in March the EPA announced it would review the mountaintop projects, breaking from the Bush administration's practice of granting permits with little or no scrutiny.

The EPA has the authority to block mountaintop removal under the Clean Water Act. But if the agency raises no objections, the final decision on projects is made by the Army Corps of Engineers, which historically has approved mountaintop mining. The corps previously had indicated its intention to approve 48 pending permits.

Although environmentalists had expected the new administration to put the brakes on mountaintop removal, Rahall and other mining advocates have pointed out that Obama did not promise to end the practice and was more open to it than his Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

A review of Obama's campaign statements show that he had expressed concern about the practice without promising to end it. On a West Virginia visit, when asked about the impact of the mining on the state's streams, he said he wanted "strong enforcement of the Clean Water Act," adding: "I will make sure the head of the Environmental Protection Agency believes in the environment."

And his EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, has said that the agency had "considerable concern regarding the environmental impact these projects would have on fragile habitats and streams." She pledged that the agency would "use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our environment."

Soon afterward, the agency in effect blocked six major pending mountaintop removal projects in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.

But this month, after a series of White House meetings with coal companies and advocates including Rahall and Democratic West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III, the EPA released the little-noticed letter giving the green light to at least two dozen projects.

"It was a big disappointment," said Joan Mulhern, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that has led court challenges to mountaintop removal. "It's disturbing and surprising that this administration, headed by a president who has expressed concern about mountaintop removal, would let such a large number of permits go forward without explanation."

Mulhern charged that the EPA "blew off" Jackson's earlier promises that the agency would adhere to science and would conduct an open process.

Ed Hopkins, a top Sierra Club official, said some of the projects that have now obtained the EPA's blessing "are as large and potentially destructive as the ones they objected to.""It makes us wonder what standards -- if any -- the administration is using," Hopkins said.

EPA and White House officials say that about 200 proposed mining projects are under review and that the administration already had taken steps to break from Bush-era policies.

"We want to make informed decisions guided by science and the law, and a change in such a practice is not something that happens overnight," said Christine Glunz, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

But after the EPA's initial announcement in March that it would conduct aggressive reviews, Manchin and Rahall took the coal industry's concerns to White House officials, including Emanuel and Nancy Sutley, who heads the Council on Environmental Quality.

Manchin said he told the White House that "we are looking for a balance between the environment and the economy, and they assured me that they will work with us to find that balance."

Environmentalists were stunned to learn from Rahall's office May 15 that the EPA had given its blessing to 42 out of the 48 mine projects it had reviewed so far -- including two dozen mountaintop removals.

The news came in a letter to Rahall from Michael Shapiro, the EPA's acting assistant administrator, who wrote, "I understand the importance of coal mining in Appalachia for jobs, the economy, and meeting the nation's energy needs."

[From the Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2009]

US--Ghastly news: Abortion provider murdered while in church

Full: <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/us/01tiller.html?_r=4&hp>

By JOE STUMPE and MONICA DAVEY Published: May 31, 2009

WICHITA, Kan. — George Tiller, one of only a few doctors in the nation who performed abortions late in pregnancy, was shot to death here on Sunday morning in the foyer of his longtime church as he handed out the church bulletin.

Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few late-term-abortion providers, was killed Sunday in church. Late Sunday, the authorities said they had taken into custody a 51-year-old man from Merriam, a Kansas City suburb, whom they said they expected to charge with murder on Monday.

The Wichita police said there were several witnesses to the killing, but the law enforcement officials would not say what had been said, if anything, inside the foyer. Officials offered little insight into the motive behind the killing, saying that they believed it was “the act of an isolated individual” but that they were also looking into “his history, his family, his associates.”

In more than three decades of providing abortions, Dr. Tiller, 67, had become a focal point for those opposed to abortion around the country. In addition to regular protests outside his clinic, his house and his church, Dr. Tiller had once seen his clinic bombed; in 1993, an abortion opponent shot him in both arms. He was also the defendant in a series of legal challenges intended to shut down his operations, including two grand juries that were convened after citizen-led petition drives.

On Sunday morning, moments after services had begun at Reformation Lutheran Church, on this city’s East Side, Dr. Tiller, who was acting as an usher, was shot once with a handgun, the authorities said. As many as a dozen other churchgoers were standing in the foyer near him when he was shot, the police said. The gunman pointed the weapon at two people who tried to stop him, the police said, then fled the church and drove off in a powder blue Taurus. Dr. Tiller’s wife, Jeanne, a member of the church choir, was inside the sanctuary at the time of the shooting.
The Associated Press reported that a sheriff’s official from Johnson County, Kan., identified the detained man as Scott Roeder....

Dr. Tiller had long been at the center of the abortion debate here, one that rarely seemed to quiet much in this southern Kansas city of about 358,000.

In 1993, Rachelle Shannon, from rural Oregon, shot Dr. Tiller in both arms; she is in prison. Two years earlier, during Operation Rescue’s “Summer of Mercy” protests, thousands of anti-abortion protesters had tried to block off the clinic, which had been the focus of a bombing in 1986. Friends of Dr. Tiller also described regular incidents of vandalism of the clinic, and a barrage of threats to him and his family — threats they say concerned him deeply and had for years.

Family members, including 4 children and 10 grandchildren, issued a statement through Dr. Tiller’s lawyer, which read, in part: “George dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality health care despite frequent threats and violence. We ask that he be remembered as a good husband, father and grandfather and a dedicated servant on behalf of the rights of women everywhere” ....

Obama's real theme: US domination of the world (a great column by John Pilger)

[From johnpilger.com] [This is a wonderfully clear-sighted view of Obama, from a distance. Emphases added. -- YM]

Obama's 100 days - the mad men did well
30 Apr 2009

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the power of advertising - from the effects of smoking to politics - as he reaches behind the facade of of the first 100 days President Barack Obama.

The BBC's American television soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold.

It is more than 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The “Obama brand” has been named “Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008”, easily beating Apple computers. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama’s election campaign as “an institutionalised mass-level automated technological community organising that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force”. Deploying the internet and a slogan plagiarised from the Latino union organiser César Chávez – “Sí, se puede!” or “Yes, we can” – the mass-level automated technological community marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W Bush.

No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous “Change you can believe in”, it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. “We will be the most powerful,” he often declared.

Perhaps the Obama brand’s most effective advertising was supplied free of charge by those journalists who, as courtiers of a rapacious system, promote shining knights. They depoliticised him, spinning his platitudinous speeches as “adroit literary creations, rich, like those Doric columns, with allusion...” (Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian). The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote: “Many spiritually advanced people I know... identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who... can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”

In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama.

All over the world, America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up. During the recent massacre in Gaza, reports Seymour Hersh, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” and being used to slaughter mostly women and children. In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office.

In Afghanistan, the US “strategy” of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the “Taliban”) has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely. Obama’s policy, one unchanged since the Cold War, is to intimidate Russia and China, now an imperial rival. He is proceeding with Bush’s provocation of placing missiles on Russia’s western border, justifying it as a counter to Iran, which he accuses, absurdly, of posing “a real threat” to Europe and the US. On 5 April in Prague, he made a speech reported as “anti-nuclear”. It was nothing of the kind. Under the Pentagon’s Reliable Replacement Warhead programme, the US is building new “tactical” nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war.

Perhaps the biggest lie – the equivalent of smoking is good for you – is Obama’s announcement that the US is leaving Iraq, the country it has reduced to a river of blood. According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain “for the next 15 to 20 years”. On 25 April, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, alluded to this. It is not surprising that the polls are showing that a growing number of Americans believe they have been suckered – especially as the nation’s economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it. Lawrence Summers, Obama’s principal economic adviser, is throwing $3trn at the same banks that paid him more than $8m last year, including $135,000 for one speech. Change you can believe in.

Much of the American establishment loathed Bush and Cheney for exposing, and threatening, the onward march of America’s “grand design”, as Henry Kissinger, war criminal and now Obama adviser, calls it. In advertising terms, Bush was a “brand collapse” whereas Obama, with his toothpaste advertisement smile and righteous clichés, is a godsend. At a stroke, he has seen off serious domestic dissent to war, and he brings tears to the eyes, from Washington to Whitehall. He is the BBC’s man, and CNN’s man, and Murdoch’s man, and Wall Street’s man, and the CIA’s man. The Madmen did well.

[Source <http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=530>]

US--Watching Obama change into Dick Cheney

[From original.antiwar.com]

Watching Obama Morph Into Dick Cheney

by Paul Craig Roberts, May 21, 2009

America has lost her soul, and so has her president.

A despairing country elected a president who promised change. Americans arrived from every state to witness in bitter cold Obama’s swearing-in ceremony. The mall was packed in a way that it has never been for any other president.

The people’s good will toward Obama and the expectations they had for him were sufficient for Obama to end the gratuitous wars and enact major reforms. But Obama has deserted the people for the interests. He is relying on his non-threatening demeanor and rhetoric to convince the people that change is underway.

The change that we are witnessing is in Obama, not in policies. Obama is morphing into Dick Cheney.

Obama has not been in office four months and already a book could be written about his broken promises.

Obama said he would close the torture prison, Guantanamo, and abolish the kangaroo courts known as military tribunals. But now he says he is going to reform the tribunals and continue the process, but without confessions obtained with torture. Getting behind Obama’s validation of the Bush/Cheney policy, House Democrats pulled the budget funding that was to be used for closing Guantanamo.

The policy of kidnapping people (usually on the basis of disinformation supplied by their enemies) and whisking them off to Third World prisons to be interrogated is to be continued. Again, Obama has substituted a "reform" for his promise to abolish an illegal policy. Rendition, Obama says, has also been reformed and will no longer involve torture. How would anyone know? Is Obama going to assign a U.S. government agent to watch over the treatment given to disappeared people by Third World thugs? Given the proclivity of American police to brutalize U.S. citizens, nothing can save the victims of rendition from torture.

Obama has defended the Bush/Cheney warrantless wiretapping program run by the National Security Agency and broadened the government’s legal argument that "sovereign immunity" protects government officials from prosecution and civil suits when they violate U.S. law and constitutional protections of citizens. Obama’s Justice Department has taken up the defense of Donald Rumsfeld against a case brought by detainees whose rights Rumsfeld violated.

In a signing statement this month, Obama abandoned his promise to protect whistleblowers who give information of executive branch illegality to Congress.

Obama is making even more expansive claims of executive power than Bush. As Bruce Fein puts it: "In principle, President Obama is maintaining that victims of constitutional wrongdoing by the U.S. government should be denied a remedy in order to prevent the American people and the world at large from learning of the lawlessness perpetrated in the name of national security and exacting political and legal accountability."

Obama, in other words, is committed to covering up the Bush regime’s crimes and to ensuring that his own regime can continue to operate in the same illegal and unconstitutional ways.

Obama is fighting the release of the latest batch of horrific torture photos that have come to light. Obama claims that release of the photos would anger insurgents and cause them to kill our troops. That, of course, is nonsense. Those resisting occupation of their land by U.S. troops and NATO mercenaries are already dedicated to killing our troops, and they know that Americans torture whomever they capture. Obama is fighting the release of the photos because he knows the barbaric image that the photos present of the U.S. military will undermine the public’s support for the wars that enrich the military/security complex, appease the Israel Lobby, and repay the campaign contributions that elect the U.S. government.

As for bringing the troops home from Iraq, this promise, too, has been reformed. To the consternation of his supporters, Obama is leaving 50,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The others are being sent to Afghanistan and to Pakistan, where on Obama’s watch war has broken out big time with already one million refugees from the indiscriminate bombing of civilians.

Meanwhile, war with Iran remains a possibility, and at Washington’s insistence, NATO is conducting war games on former Soviet territory, thus laying the groundwork for future enrichment of the U.S. military/security complex. The steeply rising U.S. unemployment rate will provide the needed troops for Obama’s expanding wars.

Obama can give a great speech without mangling the language. He can smile and make people believe his rhetoric. The world, or much of it, seems to be content with the soft words that now drape Dick Cheney’s policies in pursuit of executive supremacy and U.S. hegemony.